Video, Single Channel, 32 min, 2011
When I was a child I created imaginative stories about my father as war hero fighting with the communists
The background material for the video is a large number of radio cassettes sent between my parents, Rachid Ghossein and Maream Hamade during the years of civil war in Lebanon. Rachid was working abroad, sending money back to the family in south Lebanon. The project aims to portray their relationship through this period of time.
The cassettes provide intimate and personal details of how a relationship evolves between a couple through the passing of time, and also how a relationship may be changing and challenged, also understood as a direct consequence of the political climate of the countries they lead their everyday life in.
If the coincidence didn’t interrupt, I wouldn’t have found the archive and the idea ever had come. Hours and hours of digital letters recorded on cassette tapes, summarized the intimate history of a family. Mariam narrates with her voice and writes a scenario about love, missing and a civil war. A history promising of a bright future, which is now, the present; Archive/Memories had to beat lots of inner obstacles and needed lots of courage to precise the right distance between the ego and the film.
Lebanon – 2011 – 32′ – HD – In Arabic with English subtitles
Film by Ahmad Ghossein
Cinematography: Karam Ghossein
Editing: Vartan Avakian
Sound: Ramzi Mady
Commissioned by: Sharjah Art Foundation
